Giant George (24 page)

Happily, we made good time through the evening traffic, and arrived at Petco, a five-minute drive from home, just before it closed. George and I jumped out of the truck and pretty much dived through the entrance. Having cruised down several aisles as they were turning out all the lights, we eventually
found and grabbed the biggest muzzle we could find. It
still didn’t look big enough, I thought anxiously, as I paid for it, but it was all the store had, so it would have to do.

“It’s definitely not big enough,” Christie said when we got home and I showed it to her. “We’re going to have to work out a way to make it bigger.”

“How can we?” I asked her. I was really beginning to stress now.

“Give it to me,” she said, reaching in the kitchen drawer
for some scissors. “I’m sure I can work out a way to do it if I think long enough. Why don’t you head off and get your things packed?”

As every new parent will probably tell you, once you have your first baby almost everything you do suddenly feels like a major military operation. One minute you can come and go as you please, the next every single trip—even if it’s to the store for a carton of
milk—feels like it has to be organized to a huge degree. In the early days with Annabel, on occasions when I had her on my own, it sometimes felt like I’d rather go without pretty much anything I needed than have to do everything I had to do to get myself and my tiny baby organized to go out—get her diapered, dressed, into the car, out of the car, into her stroller, into a store, out of the store,
back into the car, home, out of the car and back to wherever we’d started. And we lived in Arizona—how did people manage (and I clearly remember thinking this) who lived in cold places like Alaska?

And if those sorts of trips had seemed like military operations, what we had to do now felt ten times more complicated. If we were going to make that flight in the morning, we had a lot to do in a
short space of time. As well as packing for ourselves, we had to get everything organized for George, of course—a whole bunch of his favorite food, portioned out, meal by meal, in ziplock bags, as well as a few doggie treats, his drool towels (we packed several, in case the color of them mattered for the cameras), his leash, his food and water bowls, and a bunch of big—and I mean BIG—bags for his
giant poops. Then we had to get everything packed for Annabel too, because Christie had arranged that we’d drop her off at my parents, who’d look after her for the two days we’d be away. It would be longer, in fact, because we’d planned to drop her that night—it made so much more sense to do that than to get her up so early and have to take her there on our way to the airport in the morning, even
though—and I knew Christie was stressing about this too—it would be the first night she’d ever spent away from us.

I went into the bedroom to see much of the job all but done, though; while George and I had been at the airport, Christie had been busy too. She’d got the half ton of stuff for Annabel pretty much sorted: the travel crib, the stroller, all the diapers and changing gear. It looked
like she’d be staying with my mom and dad for a month. I got going and started grabbing my own things.

“Hey,” said Christie, following me in a few minutes later, with Annabel at her hip and George at her side. He was modeling the now butchered giant-sized muzzle and looking reas
suringly cool about it all. “I think this’ll work, if we stitch it, don’t you?” She’d cut the bottom seam through to
make the whole thing much bigger, and from somewhere she’d managed to find some strips of Velcro, which she’d pinned into place to try out for size. “I’m thinking that if we restitch it all with the strips underneath, it’ll be big enough, but also stay closed. What d’you think?”

I shook my head, surveying both the time and my little family. It seemed crazy to be running around doing all this
stuff when we still didn’t know if it was going to happen. It was almost ten on a chilly Monday evening in February, and at least four out of the four of us should be in bed, not stitching muzzles and packing for a siege, much less depositing our daughter at my folks’ at what might turn out to be midnight, then heading off at dawn to Chicago. If that, indeed, was what it would turn out we
were
doing.

“This thing is getting more surreal by the minute,” I said. “But, yes. Great job. That’ll do fine, hon.”

As if on cue, my cell barked only seconds later. It was Shantel. It seemed we were good to go.

So much for keeping everything quiet.

When we arrived at the Tucson airport at 5 a.m. on Tuesday, we got our first real taste of what was to come. It seemed the whole world and his wife were there with us—well, not the whole world, obviously, but a huge crowd of people, around a hundred and fifty
of them at least, all of them waiting to catch the same flight as us, and all of them understandably a bit confused by the presence of a very big dog in their midst. You don’t often see pet dogs in airports. And to see a dog as big as George must have been some sight—there was none bigger than he was and that was official.

Naturally, he quickly became the center of attention. What was he doing
there? Where were we all going? And, while we were at it, did we have a saddle for that thing?

We tried our best to be vague, and must have sounded it too. We just kept saying that the three of us “had business in Chicago,” which must have raised a heap more questions than it answered. But, hey, this was celebrity life, wasn’t it?

After dropping Annabel at my mom and dad’s the previous night,
the pair of us had hardly slept a wink. We were excited, for sure—this was going to be one great adventure—but mostly it was because so much had happened in such a short space of time, and we were having trouble keeping up with it all.

Luckily, I was working on our house at that time, so taking some time out didn’t matter too much, but Christie couldn’t be off for more than a couple of days,
as she had meetings and deadlines and customers to see, and needed to keep in touch by cell too.

Unlike the two of us, however, George had been as chilled as could be. Sure, he was having a pretty good time at the moment, with so much fuss being made of him, so many unexpected and unlikely excursions, but as life was pretty much one long party for him anyway, he’d chowed down his dinner, gone
to the bathroom in the backyard, flopped down on his bed and gone right off to sleep.

So he was fresh when we hit the airport, and raring to go. Raring to meet anyone who wanted to stroke and pet him, and suddenly there was a whole bunch of people—complete strangers—who seemed to want to do just that. So he lapped it all up while we fielded the questions, and made slow progress along to security.
It was lucky we were early, because by the time we got through, we’d been meeting and greeting for over half an hour. But when we finally reached the security area, it
soon became clear that our trip—now confirmed and about to happen—might be in jeopardy after all.

Once at the security gate, we were introduced to a number of people who’d been assigned the task of showing us through. The only
thing was that there seemed to be a problem with the paperwork, as the TSA (Transportation Safety Administration) required that there was an ID for every single seat booked. And since there was only one George but George had three seats, they were two out of three IDs short. There was a huddled conversation between the various officials; then the duty manager who’d escorted us told us to wait at security
while he went back to his office to try and sort things out.

So we waited, and we waited, and we waited a little more. The other passengers continued to pet George as they passed us, and Christie and I made small talk with the security guys, while privately wondering if we’d spent half the day and night packing for nothing. Eventually, though, we spotted the manager in the distance, and after
another round of conversation and much checking of paperwork, George and Christie and I were allowed through.

But it seemed our pre-flight problems weren’t quite over. We’d been asked to hang back till everyone else had boarded, so that we could make life easier for all by being the last on the plane. I also knew it was time to put on the muzzle—the muzzle that George had been fine with only
a few hours ago, but that now it seemed he’d taken a violent dislike to. As soon as he saw it, and I tried to put it on him, he made his dislike of it plain. He started swinging his head from side to side to
try and avoid it, tossing it this way and that, clearly annoyed with us.

We were both a bit dumbstruck. How could this have happened?

“But he was fine with it!” I hissed to Christie, hoping
no one was seeing this. “He didn’t do this when we put it on him last night!”

“Yes, but perhaps he’s doing this
because
we put it on him last night,” she hissed back. “And he’s remembering he didn’t like it a whole lot!”

But the gods were being kind, because after making his point it seemed Georgie decided he’d roll with it anyway. Perhaps he could smell some chicken cooking in the galley—who
knows? All we knew was that we were pretty relieved to have him finally muzzled up and good to board. We hurried down the ramp to the plane.

When you get on a plane, I guess the last thing you expect to see is an animal, and perhaps the
very
last thing would be an animal the size of George. So it was no surprise the passengers, most of whom hadn’t seen him yet, were stunned when he walked down
the aisle. Some looked so in shock to see George saunter past to take his “seat” that it was like we’d strolled on board with a tiger.

It was interesting just looking at their faces. Some looked on in amazement, obviously thinking this was pretty cool, but others looked scared. You could almost see their minds working, and imagine them thinking, “Jeez, we’re going to be on board with this animal
for
four hours
?” Some looked so unsettled that
I began to feel bad—flying was stressful enough for some people; how much more stress were they feeling right now?

But once we got settled and organized ourselves, I realized I didn’t need to worry. I could see a guy with a laptop, who was typing furiously, and then, suddenly, George’s big beautiful face filled the screen. He then opened up his e-mail,
and I watched as he typed: “
That dog is on the plane with us right now!!!!”
We both felt much better after seeing that.

We took off on schedule, and I decided to take a chance on the muzzle. George was chilled as could be, so we removed it. We’d kind of figured things would be pretty quiet at this point, and that George would mostly nap his way through the flight. But what were we thinking? How
naive we were!

Right away, there was an exodus to the front of economy, as everyone began making their way up the aisle, those who had met George to come see how he was getting on, and those who hadn’t to come take a look for themselves at this huge dog they’d been told was on board. Once again, George lapped up all the attention. Why wouldn’t he? He loved every minute. And though we’d been concerned
about the three flight attendants, it seemed they loved him too, and were amazed at what a good boy he was.

“He’s just incredible!” said one, which made Christie and me smile.

But as the flight got under way we started to worry that George might be getting a little too much of a good thing. He’d lie down and get settled and then someone would come along, so he’d sit right back up again to soak
up the attention. After a
while, one of the flight attendants, seeing what was happening, asked us if we needed her to help calm things down.

We felt bad—we didn’t want to offend anyone, much less stop anyone who still wanted to meet him—but she was right: it
was
too much. George needed to rest. So she went and put the “fasten seat belt” signs back on, so we could have a chance to relax. And
we did: all three of us immediately dozed off.

But if we were shocked by the attention George was getting on the plane, it was nothing compared to what greeted us when we finally touched down in Chicago.

Despite all we’d been told about everyone keeping things secret, someone somewhere had obviously tipped someone else off because right away—almost as soon as we stepped off the airplane—there
was another bunch of people, about a hundred this time, both employees of the airline and members of the public, and loads of cameras clicking.

But this time we experienced a new phenomenon: no one came up close to pet George; they all kept their distance and gawked from afar. It was like he was a movie star working a red carpet: he turned this way and that, head held high, really posing. And
everyone stood and looked at him in awe.

“I don’t know what it is,” I said to Christie, “but that dog of ours has got it. Look at him! It’s like he knows who he is! Like he’s lapping up what he
knows
is his due.”

It was too. There was this presence, this aura about him, a kind of vibe that seemed to bounce off him and was incredible to
watch. I held the leash, sure, but it was George who was
leading the action. Nothing could get in his way. It was a real esoteric thing, this star quality he exuded. You see it in certain movie stars—some have it in spades, some not so much. But it was what Christie and I were now seeing in our dog, and it was something else to witness.